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The first thing to understand about Apple’s latest fight with the FBI—over a court order to help unlock the deceased San Bernardino shooter’s phone—is that it has very little to do with the San Bernardino shooter’s phone. It’s not even, really, the latest round of the Crypto Wars—the long running debate about how law enforcement and intelligence agencies can adapt to the growing ubiquity of uncrackable encryption tools. Rather, it’s a fight over the future of high-tech surveillance, the trust infrastructure undergirding the global software ecosystem, and how far technology companies and software developers can be conscripted as unwilling suppliers of hacking tools for governments. It’s also the public face of a conflict that will undoubtedly be continued in secret—and is likely already well underway.

Considered in isolation, the request seems fairly benign: If it were merely a question of whether to unlock a single device—even one unlikely to contain much essential evidence—there would probably be little enough harm in complying. The reason Apple CEO Tim Cook has pledged to fight a court’s order to assist the bureau is that he understands the danger of the underlying legal precedent the FBI is seeking to establish. Four important pieces of context are necessary to see the trouble with the Apple order.

The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people "Ridiculously optimistic" machine learning algorithm is "completely bullshit," says expert.

In a secret meeting convened by the White House around Thanksgiving, senior national security officials ordered agencies across the U.S. government to find ways to counter encryption software and gain access to the most heavily protected user data on the most secure consumer devices, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, the marquee product of one of America’s most valuable companies, according to two people familiar with the decision.The approach was formalized in a confidential National Security Council “decision memo,” tasking government agencies with developing encryption workarounds, estimating additional budgets and identifying laws that may need to be changed to counter what FBI Director James Comey calls the “going dark” problem: investigators being unable to access the contents of encrypted data stored on mobile devices or traveling across the Internet. Details of the memo reveal that, in private, the government was honing a sharper edge to its relationship with Silicon Valley alongside more public signs of rapprochement.

On Tuesday, the public got its first glimpse of what those efforts may look like when a federal judge ordered Apple to create a special tool for the FBI to bypass security protections on an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California that killed 14 people. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has vowed to fight the order, calling it a “chilling” demand that Apple “hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers.” The order was not a direct outcome of the memo but is in line with the broader government strategy.White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice have the Obama administration’s “full” support in the matter. The government is “not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor to their products,” but rather are seeking entry “to this one device,” he said.

The European Parliament narrowly adopted a nonbinding but nonetheless forceful resolution on Thursday urging the 28 nations of the European Union to recognize Edward J. Snowden as a “whistle-blower and international human rights defender” and shield him from prosecution.On Twitter, Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked millions of documents about electronic surveillance by the United States government, called the vote a “game-changer.” But the resolution has no legal force and limited practical effect for Mr. Snowden, who is living in Russia on a three-year residency permit.Whether to grant Mr. Snowden asylum remains a decision for the individual European governments, and none have done so thus far. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage Open Source: Now Following the N.S.A. on Twitter, @SnowdenSEPT. 29, 2015 Snowden Sees Some Victories, From a DistanceMAY 19, 2015 Still, the resolution was the strongest statement of support seen for Mr. Snowden from the European Parliament. At the same time, the close vote — 285 to 281 — suggested the extent to which some European lawmakers are wary of alienating the United States.

The resolution calls on European Union members to “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties.”In June 2013, shortly after Mr. Snowden’s leaks became public, the United States charged him with theft of government property and violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. By then, he had flown to Moscow, where he spent weeks in legal limbo before he was granted temporary asylum and, later, a residency permit.Four Latin American nations have offered him permanent asylum, but he does not believe he could travel from Russia to those countries without running the risk of arrest and extradition to the United States along the way.

The White House, which has used diplomatic efforts to discourage even symbolic resolutions of support for Mr. Snowden, immediately criticized the resolution.“Our position has not changed,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington.“Mr. Snowden is accused of leaking classified information and faces felony charges here in the United States. As such, he should be returned to the U.S. as soon as possible, where he will be accorded full due process.”Jan Philipp Albrecht, one of the lawmakers who sponsored the resolution in Europe, said it should increase pressure on national governments.

Microsoft has joined forces with Taser to combine the Azure cloud platform with law enforcement management tools.

Taser’s Axon body camera data management software on Evidence.com will run on Azure and Windows 10 devices to integrate evidence collection, analysis, and archival features as set forth by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy. As per the partnership, Taser will utilize Azure’s machine learning and computing technologies to store police data on Microsoft’s government cloud. In addition, redaction capabilities of Taser will be improved which will assist police departments that are subject to bulk data requests. Currently, Taser is operating on Amazon Web Services; however this deal may entice police departments to upgrade their technology, which in turn would drive up sales of Windows 10. This partnership comes after Taser was given a lucrative deal with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last year, who ordered 7,000 body cameras equipped with 800 Axom body cameras for their officers in response to the recent deaths of several African Americans at the hands of police.

In order to ensure Taser maintains a monopoly on police body cameras, the corporation acquired contracts with police departments all across the nation for the purchase of body cameras through dubious ties to certain chiefs of police. The corporation announced in 2014 that “orders for body cameras [has] soared to $24.6 million from October to December” which represents a 5-fold increase in profits from 2013. Currently, Taser is in 13 cities with negotiations for new contracts being discussed in 28 more. Taser, according to records and interviews, allegedly has “financial ties to police chiefs whose departments have bought the recording devices.” In fact, Taser has been shown to provide airfare and luxury hotels for chiefs of police when traveling for speaking engagements in Australia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); and hired them as consultants – among other perks and deals. Since 2013, Taser has been contractually bound with “consulting agreements with two such chiefs’ weeks after they retired” as well as is allegedly “in talks with a third who also backed the purchase of its products.”